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The strongest predictor of whether a man is developing dementia with Lewy bodies — the second most common form of dementia in the elderly — is whether he acts out his dreams while sleeping, Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered. Patients are five times more likely to have dementia with Lewy bodies if they experience a condition known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder, a parasomnia, than if they have one of the risk factors now used to make a diagnosis, such as fluctuating cognition or hallucinations, the study found.

"While it is, of course, true that not everyone who has this sleep disorder develops dementia with Lewy bodies, as many as 75 to 80 percent of men with dementia with Lewy bodies in our Mayo database did experience REM sleep behavior disorder. So it is a very powerful marker for the disease," says lead investigator Melissa Murray, PhD, a neuroscientist at Mayo Clinic in Florida.
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A team of sleep researchers led by University of California, Riverside psychologist Sara C. Mednick has confirmed the mechanism that enables the brain to consolidate memory and found that a commonly prescribed sleep aid enhances the process. Those discoveries could lead to new sleep therapies that will improve memory for aging adults and those with dementia, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

“We found that a very common sleep drug can be used to increase verbal memory,” said Mednick. “This is the first study to show you can manipulate sleep to improve memory. It suggests sleep drugs could be a powerful tool to tailor sleep to particular memory disorders.”
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New research published in the journal SLEEP shows that middle-aged adults who have negative changes in sleep duration may experience a decline in cognitive function comparable to four to seven years of aging.
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